Can't access my drive after fixboot in Recorvery Console XP.

Hi everyone.

My computer recently just crashed a few times, but restarts always helped.

This time restarting froze at the splash screen so I started in safe mode. Windows Recommended to start System Recovery, so I went along with it and tried to back-up the system to a previous restore point.

About half way done, the system just froze for hours. So I restarted, this time I get the message UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.

I restarted in recovery console through winxp boot CD and did a chkdsk /p, /r etc. Always froze at 3% so I restarted and read around the net. At this time when I typed "dir" in the recovery console, my hard drive was still intact and it could see all of my files.

I read around the internet and people told me to do "fixboot C:" in recovery console. I did that and it said master boot record was corrupted, but it fixed it and said it was properly fixed (Don't know how it said it exactly).

So I typed "exit" and restarted the computer.

Now I get the message "NTLDR is missing press any key to continue". So I try to replace ntldr and the other file from the recovery console and it gave me the message "Access is denied"... I type "dir" again and it reports my HD as having only 10MB!. This is a 200GB drive with over 150GB of data. I took the HD out and setup as a slave in another windows XP computer and everything boots up fine but now the slave drive detected only 10MB as recovery console did in the original computer. And some weird name files with boxes and weird symbols as file names.

Now I'm at a dead end. I tried Western Digital's Data life guard tools, nothing worked. I'm sure my data is still on the hard drive somewhere and that fixboot messed up everything from seeing anything on the HD. How can I get access back to my data?

There is over 9 years of work and memories on the hard drive, this PC was used as the backup while I was restoring other computers. Now I can't get to the files that I need, documents, vacation pictures, anything...

Will someone please give me an effective way to get my data back behind this 10MB thing that keep comming up no matter which computer I put it on?

Maximum point amount is 500, but I think this is a question that can't be rated by points. I will give a significant larger number of expert points.

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Fatal_Exception is write backup the drive first and then try to recovery that data. I would recommend using a disk cloner that clones the disk block by block as the file system is damaged. i am not sure if ghost copies data that way, but there is a free program that does on the ultimate boot cd

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Hi yes, I tried the slave thing, but it only detects a "10mb" (Supposedly 186GB (formatted NTFS) ~a 200GB HD) hard drive with some weirdly named filed in it with squares and weird characters... And that's all it can see.

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Eternal-MercuryAuthor Commented: 2004-10-08

Will the program you recommended see pass the "10mb" drive that fixboot made? and gain access to the hidden stuff I think is still on the drive.

at this point you have to very careful what utilities you run on this drive, does the bios see the whole drive? It sure sounds like your mft and or fat table are corrupted. Any utils you run on this drive can make matters worse.

I would try this software, if it see's the data then it can get it back, the download is for view only version unless you pay then you get the read and copy version i have used this software on Novell netware and it is great. I am fairly sure that this can recover your data.

I am sorry for the dup post i see that Fatal_Exception submitted the same answer, make sure you award Fatal_Exception the points if it works.

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Eternal-MercuryAuthor Commented: 2004-10-08

Hi yes, the BIOS/ATA controller does register the whole drive during POST. But in windows, even when the drive is setup as a slave in a good computer, the drive seen is only 10MB in size with the weird files. Can the software see everything on the whole 200gb even if windows doesn't see it?

Sorry, had to focus on this other machine.. and, you know, the debates...

Anyway, I have used that software successfully in the past. At this point, I believe it is your only recourse.... It is a safe way to look at any data that may (or may not) be on that drive. One neat feature of this utility is that it has a plug-in for BartsPE, a bootable Windows CD-Rom from the original Windows XP installation/setup CD. In other words, it is a bootable cd that provides its own operating system right from the image of the cd. From there, you can access any other part of the system, including the hard drives...

Floppy- A
HD1 (The good one with XP)- C
HD2 (The bad corrupted one I pulled out the other system)- D
DVD, CD, and USB drives listed on.

When you click once on "D" you'll see the chart on the left pane. 10MB. Right clicking on the D drive and going to properties, also tells you only 10MB. When you open the HD, You see weird files and folders with weird names containing strange symbols, only a few of them tho. And it reports on the status bar only 10MB. It's not a drive that's 200gb with only 10MB of weird data on it. Just a 10MB drive with strange files/folders.

Normally (before I used the fixboot command) it reported as normal as 186+/-GB as corrected formatted space... when it was normal.

Now it just seems after the fixboot, everything's unseeable. I'm just not sure if the software recommended in this forum will see the rest of the drive windows can't see anymore.

If this were me, and a client came and said that they must have the data back that was on the drive, I would immediately ghost an image of it before I did anything else. Once that is done, you can use the above to examine the image drive. There are more expensive solutions to getting this data, but like I mentioned above, you can use this utility safely. Why not dnload the software and give it a try..

I purchased my copy, but I think that the dnload will work and let you see your drive, but without a license key you will not be able to extract it.. I am not sure about this, but it is worth a try..

FE

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Eternal-MercuryAuthor Commented: 2004-10-09

Alright, I will go out and purchase a new Hard drive over the weekend, It doesn't have to be identical does it? Or just larger than the amount of data that's on the drive?